


Can't Call It Home Yet

by Rhiannon87



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Friendship, Gen, adopted family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 02:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhiannon87/pseuds/Rhiannon87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The consequences of taking Nate in off the streets of Cartagena didn't entirely sink in until Sully got back home with a fifteen-year-old would-be thief in tow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Call It Home Yet

It’s not until Sully’s unlocking the front door of his house, a little less than a month after Cartagena, that he realizes he’s basically adopted a friggin’ kid. It was easy enough to overlook, when they were bouncing from hotel to seedy hotel across Central America. Didn’t feel permanent. Sully’s whole plan was to make enough money to turn a profit and get back home, which he did. It’s just that, well, now he’s got a jumpy fifteen-year-old pickpocket in tow.

Good thing he actually has a bed in the spare bedroom, or this would be even more awkward.

He pushes the door open and glances over his shoulder to make sure Nate’s still following him. The kid’s scanning the street and the house, eyes darting around in a way that makes Sully think he’s mapping escape routes. “C’mon,” Sully says. “Let's see if I’ve got any food left, I’m starving.”

Nate makes a noncommittal sound and follows him inside. Sully drops his bag by the front door and cuts through the living room to the small kitchen. Nate stops by one of the bookshelves and tilts his head to the side, reading the titles. He’s still got his battered, second-hand duffel bag in one hand. Sully had bought it for him a couple weeks ago, along with a few changes of clothes. He’d never seen anyone so suspicious of a purchase in his life; looking back, Sully’s a little surprised the kid didn’t book it then.

He shakes his head and opens the fridge. It is, as he expected, empty, save for two bottles of beer, a half-empty jar of relish, and a loaf of bread that’s probably hard enough to use as an improvised weapon. Right. Well. Takeout it is.

A couple of low notes sound from the piano in the living room, and Sully half-turns to see Nate idly poking at the keys. “You can put the bag down, you know,” Sully says. 

Nate jumps and jerks his hand back, like he’s been caught doing something wrong. He recovers quickly, though, that bratty, narrow-eyed look of his coming back right away. “So, what, am I living with you now?” he asks.

Sully shrugs. “If you want,” he says. He’s learned a fair bit about how to—well, how to handle Nate, for lack of a better word. And giving Nate a choice, or even the illusion of choice, is crucial. “If you’d rather try your luck on the streets, I won’t stop you.” Not entirely true, but Nate doesn’t need to know that. “Thought you might prefer a roof over your head and a place to put your stuff.”

Nate shrugs, not agreeing one way or another. “I still don’t see what’s in it for you,” he says. He goes to fold his arms, then remembers he’s still holding his bag and just fidgets in place instead. “What do you get out of having me around as your ‘apprentice’ or whatever?”

He’s been asking variations on the same question for weeks, and Sully’s been dodging it, because honestly, he doesn’t know. It’s stupid. It makes no sense, professionally or personally, to take this kid in. It’s gonna cost a hell of a lot of money, looking after him, and there’s nothing to say that Nate won’t run away or get arrested or get himself killed. But there was no way he could have left the kid in Cartagena. 

Sully shrugs and leans against the door frame. “Good business,” he sort-of lies. “All the best cons need two people.”

Nate arches an eyebrow at him. “Right,” he says, dragging the word out with a level of sarcasm only achievable by teenagers. “And you couldn’t find anyone else to work with you?”

“Nobody I could put up with for very long.” Nate snorts and rolls his eyes. Sully ignores it. “Besides, like I said, you got talent. Hate to see that go to waste, not when you could be using it to help me make loads of money.”

Nate doesn’t seem to buy it, not entirely. He stares at Sully, eyes narrowed, then looks away for a second. “You’re not gonna make me go to school or anything, are you?” he asks.

“Kid, I don’t think I could make you do anything if you didn’t want to,” Sully replies. And apparently that was exactly the right thing to say, because Nate visibly relaxes and nods. Sully pushes off the door frame. “C’mon, you can crash in the spare bedroom.” Another key component of handling Nate: don’t make anything sound permanent. Sully’s entirely too familiar with the kid’s attitude, the way he’s always got one foot out the door (or the window, in Nate’s case), and he knows that if he’d said ‘this is your room now,’ Nate would be gone by morning.

“Here,” he says, pushing the door open. “Kinda dusty, but it won’t kill ya.” He used to have friends crash with him often enough, avoiding the law in one country or another, that furnishing a guest bedroom made sense. It’s not much—a single bed, a desk and chair, a lamp on the nightstand—and Sully makes a mental note to get a bookshelf or a dresser or something. “Bathroom’s across the hall.”

Nate nods and looks around the room for a few seconds before nodding and setting his bag on the bed. Sully lets out a quiet breath, feeling like he’s just won something. “Thanks,” Nate says, and it doesn’t sound entirely sarcastic.

“I’m gonna go order food,” Sully says, because if he hangs around things are going to get awkward _fast_. “You like pepperoni on your pizza?”

“Sure.”

Sully nods and steps back in the hall, leaving the door half-open, and heads back to the kitchen. He’s barely five feet away when he hears the door shut and the lock click. “Goddammit, Sullivan,” he mutters, shaking his head, “what the hell have you gotten yourself into?” 

He goes back to the kitchen and orders an extra-large; he's got no idea how much Nate will eat, but in the event they don't finish it, the leftovers will tide them over until he can get to a store. Sully stares blankly at his fridge and shakes his head. Gotta get food for two people, now. One of whom is a teenage boy who will, if Sully recalls his own adolescence correctly, put away a metric ton of food in a week. Nate's gonna need clothes, too, the three shirts he picked up for him aren't gonna cut it, some books, probably a gun of his own eventually...

Shit. He's become someone's _dad._

Sully squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. Okay, that's probably a bit of an overstatement, especially this early, but... well, if nothing else, he's the kid's primary caretaker now. He's responsible for Nate, even if he's gonna have to bend over backwards to keep the kid from figuring that out. Nate's been close-mouthed about his past, but Sully's made a few educated guesses, and he's pretty sure that the kid is not gonna react well to any overt parenting.

Which is probably fine, since Sully doesn't have the first goddamn clue about raising a kid.

Sully shakes his head and grabs the notepad from beside the phone. If nothing else, he can figure out what he'll need to buy for the house. He sits down at the table, lights a cigar, and starts scribbling.

He's filled one page (mostly groceries) and moved onto a second (mostly Nate-centric) when Nate wanders into the living room, journal in hand. Sully just nods at him and goes back to writing, pretending not to watch as Nate curls up in the armchair and settles his journal on his knees. The kid glances up at the Angolan funeral masks and starts sketching. Sully smirks, then goes back to writing.

About ten minutes pass in near-silence while Sully smokes and moves onto page three ( _still_ Nate-centric, dammit) before Nate speaks up. “So, what do you do when you're not out stealing stuff?” he asks.

Sully chuckles. “I steal stuff a lot,” he replies. Nate gives him a look, and Sully can't keep from grinning. “I look for more work,” he says and hooks an arm over the back of his chair. “Catch up with my contacts, deal with whatever shit's piled up around here.” He pauses for a second before adding, “Go out to bars, meet people.”

Nate huffs out a laugh. “Guess I'm not invited to that last one.”

“No, you are not.” Oh. Having a teenager in the house is going to put a bit of a crimp in his usual plans. Bringing a woman home with Nate around would just be... oh, wow, he is going to have to seriously revise his strategy. Damn. There is literally no part of his life that he has not made more complicated by bringing this kid home.

“What kinda jobs do you do?” Nate asks, sliding out of the chair and slinking over to the table. “Is it always museums, or do you, like, find ruins and stuff, too?”

Sully looks up at the scrawny, wary teenager sitting across the table from him and grins. Complicated, yeah, but damn if he doesn't think it's gonna be worth it. “Sometimes,” he says. “Why? You like that kinda stuff?”

Nate grins back. “Oh, yeah.”


End file.
